‘Epidemics have a way of revealing underlying truths about the societies they impact’
The Fall of the Cowboy, Frederic Remington, 1895
This phrase has been rattling around in my head while sitting inside my own little box surrounded by all the other boxes of other people, all of us refreshing our web browsers and streaming Netflix and doing weird stuff like putting up Christmas lights, and that phrase is “All that is solid melts into the air.”
It’s from Marx, “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind,” a quote that I’ve seen a few times in reference to the pandemic, because in times of crisis all thoughts seem profound and then are instantly cliched. To be honest, I only have a basic understanding of the context in which Marx wrote it, referring to revolutionizing economic systems, but it captures a certain surreal feeling of things that once seemed so inevitable, that we depended on or railed against, becoming vapor.
This is a terrifying feeling, but it is also revealing of what exactly it is we are all doing here. What we’ve been valuing all this time and what we subject ourselves to, often needlessly, in service of a system that is, at least for now, loaded with holes. As Anne Applebaum puts it, “Epidemics have a way of revealing underlying truths about the societies they impact.”
For one, they unveil with stark clarity the worst humans among us, that some portion of the people who are always holding back our quality of life, our collective liberation, our basic survival, are quite simply, forgive me, just pieces of shit.
Beyond the obvious pieces, we see it in senators rushing to sell off their stocks while reassuring the public that everything will be fine, “hustlers” filling up storage units with hand sanitizer and gouging scared consumers, tech execs dismissing precautions in the name of maintaining productivity, landlords demanding rent from tenants left with zero income, “private jets pouring in” to remote vacation communities and straining the seasonal towns’ resources and labor.
On the flip side, we are also seeing what we are capable of in the name of helping each other. That includes intimate acts of virtue and charity, but also systemic changes happening seemingly overnight now that a widespread emergency has made the need appear sufficient.
That includes Republicans suddenly proposing essentially universal basic income, laborers awarded free childcare and sick pay, suspending evictions and foreclosures, Wikimedia dropping its full-time work week to 20 hours. And maybe my favorite example because it involves reconfiguring actual physical space, Bogota expanding its bike lanes overnight, with a snap of a gd finger, to accommodate transportation and improve air quality in a city of 8 million people. Granted, it’s not like everything is suddenly perfect by any stretch of the imagination it’s a real mess out there, but wow look at this stuff that we can fix.
A lot of people are pointing these changes out, and the absurdities they put on display, these bullshit scarcities we manufacture, made eerily clear by vacant hotels and ghost flights in the air for no reason. Dan Kois at Slate says, “the coronavirus is revealing, or at least reminding us, just how much of contemporary American life is bullshit, with power structures built on punishment and fear as opposed to our best interest.”
There is a pitfall here of being disingenuous in concluding that we could sustain all of these emergency measures during times of non-emergency. But, then again… Maybe we could?
The main difference that is prompting these expansions of certain benefits is a temporary shift in who we perceive deserves care. Things have reached a certain level of badness for all of us and, presumably, every one of us needs some kind of assistance right now. So when everyone needs help under extraordinary circumstances, we’re forced to temporarily set aside our founding American principle that some of us deserve it and some of us don’t.
Meanwhile, every single one of the negative impacts people are experiencing albeit on a more widespread basis during pandemic (illness, poverty, unemployment, untimely death, loss of mobility, lack of food and water, social isolation) are experienced by some people in this country every single day, often with little or no societal recourse. And we tolerate it because.
As Annie Lowrey points out, the pandemic exposes our pitiful social protections:
[The US] spends less than a third of what the average OECD country does on helping the jobless, about a third supporting families with kids, and 50 percent less on incapacity, meaning disability, sickness, or injury that might keep a person from accessing the labor market.
This reminds me of Elizabeth Anderson’s argument for a new understanding of equality (see Crisis Palace 15: Shared fates), based on interdependence and the belief that all people, regardless of an individual’s own “fault” or bad luck, have equal worth and deserve certain conditions in life.
So if we’re willing to change some of these rules once the shit has hit the fan for all of us, why couldn’t we do so when it was happening for some portion of us, all the time? Why couldn’t we say that nobody deserves this kind of hardship? That it’s never OK? That societal well-being is a higher priority than maximizing economic growth and the latter doesn’t create the former? (Here’s the mandatory connection to climate change this week.)
So maybe we can look at this sudden loss of solid form—the sweeping overnight changes, the heightened transparency, the bad actors exposed—certainly not as a silver lining, but as a way of recognizing that things are the way they are because we’ve made certain choices based on certain values. And consider how things could be if, in times of non-crisis should we godwilling experience them again, we changed those values.
Links
- A couple of reports have now predicted the pandemic could last 18 months.
- “There’s no better place to self-distance than Martha’s Vineyard,” said Gary A. Jenkins, a New York entertainment lawyer. “I can sit on my front porch, smoke a cigar, and not see anybody.”
- Don’t get dressed to work from home.
- #ReleaseTheButtholeCut this will be the most popular link I just know you people.
- The wealthiest tenth of people consume about 20 times more energy than the bottom tenth, wherever they live.
- Want to read a takedown of that horrible video of celebrities singing Imagine yes of course you do.
Listening
This is a cover of a Built to Spill song that sounds nothing like the original and I love both versions. It’s by Frances Quinlan the singer from Hop Along she has a whole solo record out.
Watching
I know everyone has been talking about this right now and you’re probably sick of reading about it, but I feel like I have to address the question of which is better, 2018’s Mission: Impossible Fallout or 2015’s Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation. I’m sorry, but I just don’t have a clearcut answer there’s a lot of nuance involved. For example, Henry Cavill in Fallout is a huge step up from Jeremy Renner, but Rebecca Ferguson shines with more screen time in Rogue Nation. Ultimately, I think the only reasonable way to think of them is as one combined work of art, two parts of a whole. Actually, scratch that, Fallout is better but Rogue Nation is still pretty good. Both are better than Ghost Protocol.
I also watched Bad Times at the El Royale which is kind of a ridiculous movie but the campy performances and mid-century modern set are a lot of fun. Reminded me of all those stylish indie hits from the 90s.
I Endorse
Going out of the way to pay service providers, nonprofits, artists, and small businesses you love, if you have some financial stability. There are a lot of great ideas out there for ways to do this.
Like if you hire domestic workers, you can pay them their usual rate even if you’re not using their services (and/or consider paying into the National Domestic Workers Alliance Coronavirus Care Fund).
You can buy gift cards for restaurants and cafes you like, and takeout is considered safe as long as you are careful.
Donate to your local food bank.
It’s a good time to buy music and merch from artists you love, including on Bandcamp, which is forfeiting its share of sales today (Friday).
You can support your bookstore by ordering gift cards, ordering online if they offer it, or by linking them to a Libro.fm audiobook membership. Even if you don’t listen to a lot of audiobooks, your monthly payment gives the store a regular kickback.
If you read comics, indie publishers and fantastic stores like Floating World Comics in Portland are taking online orders for delivery or curbside pickup. My dear friend Jason at Floating World is sharing a lot of amazing rare comics he has for sale on his Instagram feed and using the hashtag #stayhomereadcomics
And if you love a particular artist, designer, etc. from Instagram or wherever, they probably have an online store where you can buy stuff from them.
So how are you doing? Fine but not fine? Same same but different? Yeah me too. As much as this issue was all about things changing so much, it also feels like we’re just at the very beginning of something. A friend relayed an insight from a mutual friend who works at a hospital and said it feels like he’s watching this enormous wave starting to form in front of him.
I don’t really know what to tell you to be honest, but remember how I mentioned people are doing all these weird things right now? Well one funny thing I did was decide to repair my suitcase. One of its wheels is broken and I figured I would finally order a replacement part and fix it. Then I realized this is kind of ridiculous because I will presumably have no need for a suitcase anytime soon. Oh good thing that suitcase is in good shape so I can be ready for my upcoming trip from the bedroom to the living room.
But you know, we have to be aspirational right. So maybe now’s a good time to think about something you want to fix that literal or metaphorical suitcase wheel to repair for when it’s time to go somewhere again. Or not you can just watch TV if you want it’s totally fine.
Tate